August is the CA Exam Form filling month for all CA students due to appear for their exams in November, 2020. The ICAI provides the CA Final students to decide their Elective Paper (Paper 6) till the time of submitting their exam forms. So if you are still undecided about which Elective Paper to choose, you are at the right place. Read on to know more...
What is the Elective Paper?
The New Syllabus of the CA course saw a lot of changes, but the most interesting one was the introduction of an Elective Paper as Paper 6 of the CA Final exams. The Elective paper provides 6 choices to the student to choose his Paper 6 subject from. The choices available are:
Global Financial Reporting Standards
International Taxation
Financial Services & Capital Markets
Risk Management
Economic Laws
Multidisciplinary Case Study
While the candidate can choose any one subject from these 6 choices, the exam is going to be open-book and case study based. And the length of the exam would be 4 hours.
How to choose the Elective Paper?
Now that the ball is in the court of the students, it is important that the choice of the Elective Paper is made after careful thought and analysis. Some of the factors which should be taken into consideration are:
Pass percentage
Ability to score high marks
Field in which you want to make a career
Relevance of the course for your future career
Interest and passion
Ease of preparation
Elective Papers at a Glance
Paper 6A - Risk Management
This paper focuses on the practical aspects of the risk-related issues in the business environment - an area that is of much importance if you want to build a career in the insurance sector or consultancy services. If you look at the course content, it has much in common with SCMPE, SFM, Audit and Logic. Plus, it is a direct predecessor of the Post Qualification course of ICAI - Diploma in Insurance and Risk Management. Those pursuing Actuarial Sciences have an added advantage in this subject.
Paper 6B - Financial Services and Capital Market
This paper is of interest to a lot of CA students (from the content and relevance point of view). It deals with providing knowledge of the financial services sector - banks, mutual funds, alternative investment funds, and other financial intermediaries. This paper has a lot in common with SFM and Law. So it is naturally the most preferred Elective for anyone looking for a career in financial services, banking, capital markets, or consulting. Anyone pursuing CFA will definitely find this subject easy to handle.
Paper 6C - International Taxation
This paper is a must for anyone aspiring to build a career in Taxation or International Taxation. This is a favourite Elective Paper for a lot of CA students, because of the content worth 30 marks also being there in the compulsory Direct Tax Paper (Paper 7). But this paper is quite heavy on tax rules, circulars, notifications and case laws. Not to forget, transfer pricing forms an important part of the paper. This paper also allows students to specialize in this area through the Diploma in International Taxation - a post-qualification course conducted by the ICAI.
Paper 6D - Economic Laws
This paper is a perfect choice for anyone aspiring for a career in the legal domain - be it as a Company Secretary or a Corporate Lawyer, or an Insolvency professional. This paper has a lot in common with the Law Paper (Paper 4). The course content finds a lot of similarity with the Company Secretary course also. As the name suggests, statutes, regulations and case laws form an integral part of the Paper, with IBC as one of its major pillars.
Paper 6E - Global Finance Reporting Standards
This is an Elective for those very keen in the Accounting field. This paper lets the students to develop their knowledge in application of the international financial reporting standards. So this would be of interest for anyone looking for a career in the core domains of Accounting or Auditing. While it has can be called an extension of the FR Paper (Paper-1), it has a lot in common with the CPA course. As you may have rightly guessed, this course is heavy on accounting frameworks, IFRS, IndAS and US GAAP.
Paper 6F - Multidisciplinary Case Study
This course is for Dabangg students who love challenges. As the name suggests, the question paper is highly dynamic and unpredictable, with case studies coming from the fields of accounting, auditing, taxation, law, finance, strategy, management, etc. However, this is a perfect Elective for someone who wants to become an entrepreneur or a top-notch consultant, particularly because of the dynamic nature of the questions one can expect in this Paper.
Which is the most scoring Elective Paper?
Now that you know what each Elective Paper has to offer, let us talk about what matters the most to CA students - marks and pass percentages. As per an RTI seeking the relevant statistics for the Elective Paper, the Elective on Risk Management seems to be a high-scoring one. Here's the reply of the ICAI to the RTI:
A quick analysis of the above table will show the following trends:
The number of students opting for Paper 6A (Risk Management) and Paper 6C (International Taxation) have gone up very sharply.
Paper 6A (Risk Management) has the highest number of candidate exemptions in May 2019
The pass percentage of Paper 6C (International Taxation) looks to be the least encouraging in May 2019 (I am told the same trend continued in November 2019 also)
The ICAI has started to make the papers a bit tighter in those Electives where the students feel there is scope of scoring easy marks - compare the pass percentages of Paper 6C (International Taxation) for Nov.18 and May 19 and also Paper 6D (Economic Laws) for the same period.
Paper 6F (Multidisciplinary Case Study) is certainly not the Elective of choice for CA Final students
Although the course content of Paper 6B (Financial Services and Capital Markets) looks pretty interesting for those interested in the capital markets and stock market, the reality is very different. Not many students want to go for this paper because it has a reputation of being a bit on the tougher side.
On an overall front, the students choose their elective on the basis of the feedback received from their seniors and the scores achieved in the previous attempt. However, the ICAI is smart enough to sense this and absolutely screw up the students in the next attempt. And as far as the information I have been able to gather from secondary sources, this has actually happened with Papers 6A and 6C in the November 2019 attempt. Both were a bit tricky and difficult to score, naturally because, the feedback for both these papers was very positive from the candidates who had appeared in the May 2019 attempt.
Can students shift from one Elective paper to another?
Yes. The student is required to choose one Elective Paper at the time of registration for CA Final. The ICAI would provide him with the study material of that Elective along with that of the other subjects. However, the ICAI also allows the student to change his mind and opt for a different Elective Paper at the time of filling the exam form. So the option exercised at the time of filling up the exam form will be treated as final by the ICAI.
My Advice
There are 6 Electives to choose from, and it is important for the candidate to not just do some prior homework, but to also think about his own interests and career choices when selecting a particular Elective. It is not just about the marks, because the ICAI is smarter than you. What matters more is your ability to grasp the content, understand things and to be able to solve the case studies in the examination hall.
While the introduction of the Elective Paper is a very welcome move by the ICAI, it being an open-book exam does not necessarily make the exam easier to crack. Trust me, I have faced this in the CS exams (where there is a similar system of an Elective Paper) and being an open book exam only makes it tougher to answer questions.
So choose wisely and prepare well.I will cover the tips for preparing for the elective paper in a future post. So if you have not already subscribed to this Blog, please do so at the earliest.
If you have any questions, observations, feedback or suggestions, please feel free to contact me on the social media handles of CA Exam Strategies or write directly to me in the comments section below.
Thanks for reading :)
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